The potential of Information and Communication Technology to eradicate poverty and improve the life of citizens in developing countries has made it a top priority in the agendas of different decision making bodies at the international level. In response to this concern, the UN General Assembly Resolution 56/183 decided to convene the World Summit on the Information Society in order to discuss the issues at stake.

Despite the fact that the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva 2003 ended up with an agreement on a "Declaration of Principles" and a "Plan of Action", it left unsolved more controversial issues, including the questions of Internet governance and funding.

When the 2003 summit failed to reach an agreement on the future of Internet governance (IG), or even on the definition of what comprised Internet governance, the UN Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) was formed to come up with ideas on how to progress. This summit entrusted the UN Secretary-General to establish the WGIG to clarify the issues and report before the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis 2005.

IG issues led to a heated global debate because the international consensus was only on the importance of the issue but not on the existing governance structures, which were questionable, especially for developing countries which, to a large extent, felt alienated and outside existing structures.

At the second phase of the summit in Tunis, 2005, the "Tunis Agenda for the Information Society" was adopted including a request to the United Nations Secretary-General to convene a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue on the future of Internet governance. In response, Secretary-General, Kofi Annan convened the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as a 5 year process, starting in 2006 and ending by 2010, to facilitate and allow for a wider global dialogue on Internet policy principles in an open and inclusive process. The IGF mandate was set as a forum to discuss the main public policy issues related to Internet governance in order to foster Internet sustainability, robustness, security, stability and development.

IG issues are difficult to analyze, discus and manage because of the involved complexity and the different approaches pertaining to different actors who may be part of the solution. According to the current round of the IGF, Internet governance issues were classified into five key public policy themes, namely (a) Managing critical Internet resources, (b) Security, openness and privacy, (c) Access and diversity, (d) Internet governance for development, (e) Cloud computing.

So far, the contribution of most of the developing countries in the debates pertaining to IG issues, including the ICANN process, is rather limited. Even when developing countries do participate in those meetings, participation is often confined to government representatives and not expanded to a wide array of stakeholders. Without doubt, most developing countries have been unaware of the process or ways to actively participate in it, missing critical opportunities to bring their views and needs to the global arena.

ESCWA and the League of Arab States (LAS) have launched this Arab Dialogue on Internet Governance in order to consolidate efforts and harmonize implementation of activities that assist Arab countries in reaching IG goals.

This dialogue aims primarily at: (a) providing a better understanding of common challenges and prospects of Internet governance from the perspective of the Arab region; (b) building capacity of Arab countries to respond to those challenges; (c) enabling Arab countries to seize opportunities to bring their views and needs to the global arena, hence shaping an optimum global policy structure for Internet Governance; and (d) Promoting Arab countries’ role as effective players in the global Internet society.

Through the Arab Dialogue on Internet Governance, ESCWA and LAS are gathering feedback and suggestions from Arab and international stakeholders concerning the newly developed “Regional Roadmap for Internet Governance in the Arab Countries" as well as ".arab", and its IDN counterpart, top-level domains initiative.